Wit & Attitude Quote by Bo Bennett

Popularity is usually treated like a numbers game: attention, reach, virality, the dopamine math of being seen. Bo Bennett flips that logic with a businessperson's pragmatism and a moral jab, arguing that the only popularity worth trusting is earned through kindness, not spectacle. The line works because it calls out a modern cheat code without naming it: you can manufacture visibility through “acts of stupidity” - outrageous stunts, cruelty played for laughs, controversy optimized for clicks. That kind of popularity is loud, fast, and fragile.

The subtext is a warning about incentives. In any marketplace (and social life is a marketplace), people respond to what gets rewarded. If stupidity gets attention, it gets repeated. Bennett’s phrasing sets up a clean binary - kindness versus stupidity - to make the moral choice feel obvious, even if reality is messier. He’s not denying that stupid behavior can create fame; he’s demoting it to counterfeit popularity, the kind that depends on an audience’s boredom and disappears when the next spectacle arrives.

Context matters: Bennett comes from the self-help/business-motivation ecosystem, where “brand” and “reputation” are currency. Kindness here isn’t just virtue; it’s strategy. Acts of kindness build durable social capital: people remember how you made them feel, they vouch for you, they stick around. Acts of stupidity may trend, but they rarely translate into trust. The quote is less a sermon than an investor’s advice: don’t chase attention; cultivate allegiance.